Terence Corcoran: Toronto's transit feud is so bad there’s only one solution left: Start over

In the first of two parts, columnist Terence Corcoran examines the trouble with transit policy-making in Toronto. (Read part two here.)

In the great Toronto transit debacle, more than $12-billion in projects are at stake in decisions that will shape the region for half a century. The concepts are complex, the risks are high, political infighting is deep and nasty, and the need for something that approaches rationality has never been greater — and has never seemed so far away.

The gap between here and good governance, already seemingly insurmountable, reached the absurd at Toronto city council’s now notorious Feb. 8 meeting, the one where Karen Stintz, councillor for Ward 16 and chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, orchestrated a coup de transit against Mayor Rob Ford’s plans for subway expansion and in favour of greater use of above-ground light rail transit schemes.

Never mind the details of the debate. The real indicator of the state of transit policy-making in Toronto came after council had voted to set up “an expert advisory panel” to determine the feasibility of several core transit projects, including expansion of the Sheppard subway.

Late that evening of Feb. 8, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam — darling of the downtown leftists who was recently crowned “The Anti-Ford” by Toronto Life magazine — moved an amendment to the Stintz motion. Ms. Wong-Tam said that members of the advisory panel that would determine much of the transit future of the city should incorporate “a gender and racial equality lens.” Furthermore, the panel of “experts” should include “senior representatives” from the Toronto Women’s City Alliance and an organization called Social Planning Toronto.

The objectives of the Women’s City Alliance are “to end the growing silence and invisibility of girls’ and women’s voices and issues. … Poverty, homelessness, un- and under-employment, racist and domestic violence and sexual abuse is an overwhelming reality for many girls and women. How actively is the city addressing these critical issues?”

The Wong-Tam motion carried 29 to 14, supported by Ms. Stintz and others who should know better, thus driving Toronto transit policy-making further off the rails.

Even before Ms. Wong-Tam got into the act, the advisory panel of experts was shaping up to be an impossible collection of people on an impossible mission. Panel membership was to include “senior representatives” — plural — from each of Metrolinx, the Toronto Transit Commission, Toronto Board of Trade, and the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, as well as former mayor David Crombie, transit academic Eric Miller, former councillor Gordon Chong and a representative of the Sheppard East Village Business Improvement Association.

This unwieldy collection of instant experts and veterans of transit wars was to report back to council by March 21. It’s now Feb. 24. One preliminary meeting was held last Friday and another is set for today. Only 26 more days to go before the panel works through a multi-point agenda that includes determining the fate of the Sheppard subway plan.

The Toronto Board of Trade’s president, Carol Wilding, said the board will not accept the invitation to join the panel — perhaps aware that the process was doomed before it began but also unwilling to participate in a redundant panel with political colours set up to do the work of existing agencies, such as the province-run Metrolinx. Metrolinx staff are attending the meetings, but more as advisors/observers and not as active members, although it is unclear whether a vote will be held.

There is no way such a panel could ever reach any meaningful conclusions within the deadline set by the Stintz motion — or under any conditions, given its makeup. And now, with upheaval at the Toronto Transit Commission following the dismissal of general manager Gary Webster, the city’s mass transit expansion program appears to be at least temporarily paralyzed in a power struggle between the forces aligned with Mayor Ford and his subway vision against others, including Ms. Stintz, aligned with the old David Miller Transit City street-level, light-rapid transit plans.

This is a power struggle well worth having, but it may also be a struggle neither side deserves to win.

The Toronto transit war is a clash between two grand visions that are top-heavy products of master planners and/or big-spending politicians shaded with ideological agendas that run from greenhouse gas issues to traffic control and economic development and the plight of abused girls. This is a battle of government central planners who can’t agree on how to drop billions of dollar in subsidies on projects that may well be of dubious value.

In Transit City vs. Ford City, it is possible, even likely, that both would be major mistakes. The economics and benefits of laying long stretches of Transit City’s light rail transit (LRT) down the middle of major thoroughfares may be cheaper than subways, but they may still be bad ideas, creating more congestion and for the wrong reasons. Subways built along the Ford routes that are too thinly populated would also be major and costly economic mistakes.

Toronto transit policy-making has become an ideological and partisan battleground rather than a solid basis for establishing groundbreaking infrastructure. With the current agencies and political forces, including the provincial government, mired in political confusion and indecision, the way forward — I suggest — is to do what nobody wants to do: Stop the trains! Everybody get off. Step back and, to some degree, start again.

When I suggested starting again to a couple of participants in the transit wars, they rejected the idea. We’ve been at this for 30 or 40 years, it’s time to act. But act on what? And why?